


The Big Wheel Affair

by Garonne



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: First Meeting, M/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 03:20:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5075839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garonne/pseuds/Garonne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Napoleon has a one-night stand with one of the Soviet agents at the UNCLE office in Vienna. Next morning he learns he's to be partnered with the man...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Big Wheel Affair

**Author's Note:**

> An enormous thank you to the_wretching for a very thorough beta-reading, to spikesgirl58 for all her encouragement and to yaoi_hunter for helping with my Russian. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> This is set in early 1961, just before the concept of the 'laser' took off, and a few months before the Berlin Wall was built.

.. .. ..

Napoleon was roused from sleep by the sound of his communicator. He sat up and grabbed it from the bedside table.

"Solo here."

As he listened to Waverly's secretary Sandra in New York, he let his gaze fall on the other person in the hotel bed with him. The man was called Kuryakin, one of the Soviet agents at Vienna HQ. What had he said his first name was again? Illya, that was it.

Kuryakin had also woken instantly at the sound of the communicator. Now he lay silently on his back, staring at the ceiling and listening to Napoleon's conversation.

Waverly's message, as relayed by Sandra, was that Napoleon should report to the local UNCLE office in Vienna at eight this morning, and that the flight tickets for his planned return to New York had already been cancelled.

Napoleon replaced the communicator on the bedside table. He caught sight of a pile of clothes on the floor: his shirt, and on top of it, Illya's black slacks. He was hit by the sudden, vivid memory of himself kneeling over Illya, fumbling to unbutton them the night before.

He shook his head to clear it. He was back on duty now, mission details still unknown, and should be concentrating on getting to the local office. He looked around for his watch. It had ended up on the floor by the bed, and he angled his head to read the face.

"It's six in the morning."

Kuryakin didn't answer. Napoleon turned to face him, and saw the other man was still staring at the ceiling, his expression unreadable. His knees were bent, and the bedcovers had slipped down to his waist, so that his chest was exposed. Faint red lines crisscrossed his right shoulder from where the sheets had left creasemarks, and his hair was tousled, sticking out at all angles. Napoleon distinctly remembered contributing to that himself.

Kuryakin turned his head, catching Napoleon's eye.

"I hope you didn't have any urgent plans for tonight in New York, Solo," he said in a matter-of-fact tone.

Napoleon didn't answer straight away. The occasion would usually have called for a good-morning kiss, and a charmingly worded expression of appreciation for the previous night. But Kuryakin wasn't exactly the sort of person he usually woke up with.

"Do you, ah, want a lift somewhere?" Napoleon asked. "I booked a taxi to take me to the airport this morning. It should be here in half an hour or so. We might as well use it."

Kuryakin just raised an eyebrow at him.

Napoleon grimaced.

"On second thought, that would be a bit indiscreet of us, wouldn't it?" 

"Just a little," Kuryakin said, returning to his study of the ceiling.

Napoleon took the opportunity to go on studying Kuryakin. He didn't get the impression the man was feeling awkward or uncomfortable with the situation, just -- genuinely contemplative.

"Want the bathroom first?" Napoleon asked.

"Yes."

And with that, Kuryakin was out of the bed and padding round the room, collecting his clothes, unselfconsciously naked. He disappeared into the bathroom, and re-appeared less than ten minutes later, washed and dressed. He hadn't shaved, but blonds were lucky that way; it hardly showed. He shrugged on the coat he'd left on a chair by the door.

"Good-bye, Solo," he said abruptly.

Napoleon had pulled on his robe in the meantime, and was going through his suitcase, rethinking his wardrobe choices with this unexpected change of plans in mind. He gave Kuryakin his most charming smile.

"It was a pleasure to meet you."

Kuryakin's lips twitched in an expression that could have been anything from a smile to a moue of indifference. For a second he hesitated, his hand on the doorknob. He looked as though he was about to say something else, but in the end he just nodded, and left.

Napoleon headed for the bathroom, thinking it probably wasn't a bad thing that Kuryakin had left so quickly. He hadn't expected the man to stay the whole night, and he was pretty sure Kuryakin hadn't been planning on that either. Somehow it had just happened. And in any case, he'd been expecting to leave Vienna this morning and never see Kuryakin again.

Napoleon had originally been meant to stay only two weeks in Vienna. He was there for a series of highly specialized training courses and seminars, organized by the local UNCLE office and attended by field agents from across the world.

Yesterday evening, the final night before he was due to fly back to the States, all the course participants had gone out for a drink together in a small Brauhaus in the city center. The place seemed to be popular with UNCLE agents, because Napoleon recognized many faces he'd seen around Vienna HQ. He ended up sitting at a crowded table next to a Russian lab agent who had given a seminar on improvised explosive devices the day before. 

"Kuryakin," the man said, holding out a hand.

"Solo." They shook hands, and Napoleon took a seat on the bench beside the Russian agent. "I liked your seminar."

The man didn't smile, but only nodded. Napoleon was about to give up on that particular conversational gambit, and turn back to the discussion going on across the table at large, when Kuryakin added, "From what I hear, you didn't really need it."

"Oh?"

"I read about your escapade in the Rockies last month."

"Ah, I see." Napoleon couldn't suppress a smirk, though he tried to make it as modest as possible. "Well, I managed to take out half the mountainside at the same time. Misjudged the explosive power of aluminum additives. My boss wasn't too happy, and neither was the National Park Service."

"That's always a danger with fuel oil. I prefer something like molasses myself." He gave Napoleon a quick, almost imperceptible grin. "Not that that's something you usually find in huge quantities in THRUSH mountain hideaways, I suppose."

"Budge up, Solo," said a voice in Napoleon's ear. Another Section Two agent, carrying two tankards of beer, had just arrived at the table.

"That for me, Jurgen?" Napoleon asked with a grin, nodding at the beer. "Thanks, very kind of you."

"As if I would waste good Austrian beer on an American," Jurgen scoffed, sitting on the bench in the space Napoleon had made for him. He pushed the second beer across the table to one of the other local agents. "You simply don't know how to appreciate it."

"Well, if you refuse to help educate me..."

Jurgen laughed.

"You would need to stay here another six months to sample everything that Austrian breweries have to offer."

"Six months?" another agent said, overhearing. "Twelve, surely, and that's just for the light beers."

That set off a heated discussion about precisely how many varieties of beer existed in Austria. It was complicated by the presence of a German agent who insisted that most Austrian beers had to be eliminated from the discussion, because they hadn't a hope in hell of satisfying the Duke of Bavaria's famous beer purity regulations, and therefore weren't really beers at all.

Vienna had one of the more cosmopolitan UNCLE offices, with several Soviet bloc agents along with the Austrians and other central Europeans. The discussion around the table that evening was a lively one. It soon moved on to the recent awarding of the next Winter Olympics to Innsbruck, which had all the local agents excited. The majority were trying to shout down a handful of pessimists who claimed the necessary infrastructure was lacking.

Napoleon had been in the Swiss Alps once before, after parachuting out of a THRUSH helicopter, but never in the Alps in Austria.

"Are you a fan of winter sports?" he asked Kuryakin, who wasn't contributing to the general conversation at all, just nursing his vodka and listening.

"I had to ski my way out of the Urals once," Kuryakin said. "Took me three or four days. But other than that, no."

And that seemed to be all he had to say on the subject. He reached for his drink again, and so did Napoleon, but out of the corner of his eye he was still watching Kuryakin.

There was something about the man that just seemed to draw the eye. He was good-looking, certainly, but that could be said of plenty of people. Maybe it was the way he held himself, tightly coiled. It made you wonder just how much energy was trapped inside. Or maybe it was the incongruity of the angelic choir-boy look, and the man's actual personality: from what little Napoleon had seen of him he was rather short-tempered and far from being innocent. 

Kuryakin looked up and met Napoleon's gaze. Napoleon winced. He'd been caught staring, blatantly so.

But instead of the glower Napoleon would have expected, Kuryakin's expression changed from his initial surprise to something open -- something inquiring. A tiny spark seemed to flicker in his eye, and Napoleon's stomach did a little answering flip. Was he imagining it, or --

He held Kuryakin's gaze for a few moments longer, and Kuryakin stared right back.

Then Napoleon looked away, because this was a dangerous game to be playing in the middle of a crowd of highly observant agents.

That was assuming Kuryakin even was playing. Napoleon's instincts were usually good, but Kuryakin was anything but easy to read.

They were sitting quite close together on the bench now. Napoleon shifted discreetly so that his upper arm was pressed against Kuryakin's. Nothing suspicious in that, with the table as crowded as it was.

Kuryakin shifted ever so slightly to return the pressure

Napoleon smiled inwardly.

Kuryakin turned away to speak to the man on the other side of him, and Napoleon did likewise on his side.

Half an hour or so later, Napoleon drained his glass.

"I'd better head off," he announced to the table at large. "Early flight tomorrow morning."

It took him another five minutes to shake hands with everyone at the table, issue invitations to look him up in New York if anyone was ever sent there, and exchange another round of jokes and laughs. He didn't pay any particular attention to Kuryakin, and was careful not to look at him as he left.

Once outside, he walked a few yards down the street, and then stepped into the darkened doorway of a bookshop to wait. After two or three minutes he heard footsteps and Kuryakin joined him.

Napoleon gave him his most flirtatious smile, which Kuryakin didn't return.

"I presume you have a hotel room," the Russian said.

" _Am Michaelerplatz._ " 

It was near enough to walk. They made the journey in silence, side by side in the bitingly cold air of the winter's night. Napoleon savored the sweet, sharp wave of excitement building up inside him. He very rarely indulged with a man.

They separated in the street outside the hotel.

"Room 307," Napoleon said, and Kuryakin disappeared into the dark alley beside the hotel.

He timed it perfectly, arriving in Napoleon's corridor by the stairs just as Napoleon stepped out of the elevator.

Napoleon unlocked the door to his room. Once inside, they split up, silently and efficiently dividing the task of securing the room as though they'd been doing it together for years.

"All secure?" Kuryakin said finally, emerging from the bathroom.

Napoleon nodded, and Kuryakin began to strip, quickly and efficiently.

"Hang on a minute!" Napoleon protested.

Kuryakin looked up.

"What?"

"Just -- you look like you're stripping off for a medical exam."

To his surprise, Kuryakin grinned, the first genuine smile Napoleon had seen on that face.

"Were you planning to offer me a drink and sweet-talk me into sucking you off?"

Napoleon winced.

"I would at least like to know your name."

"Short-term memory problems?" Kuryakin gave him a very serious, very sorrowful look. "One blow to the head too many, I suppose?"

"Your _first_ name."

The other man hesitated a moment longer.

"Illya," he said finally.

"Mind if I call you that?"

"I'd rather you didn't."

Napoleon was taken aback.

"Why on earth not?"

"Because then I'd have to call you Napoleon," Kuryakin said calmly.

Napoleon frowned. He was starting to wonder if he was having his leg pulled.

"And what's wrong with that?"

"The man who catastrophically failed to invade Russia?"

"Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Moscow, I'll have you know -- " Napoleon said hotly, then remembered he was supposed to be seducing the man, not arguing about military history. He stopped short. Kuryakin -- Illya -- had a definite twinkle in his eye.

"Maybe you should just get undressed, Napoleon." 

Napoleon had to laugh. He rather liked this slyly humorous side of Kuryakin. He never would have suspected it existed. That didn't mean he was going to let Kuryakin get away with murder, however. He decided it was time to take control of the situation again.

Instead of doing as he was bidden and getting undressed, he took a step forward, so that they were within touching distance. Illya had gotten as far as undoing his shirt buttons, but Napoleon ignored the thin fabric of the undershirt, and the bare chest above its neckline. Instead, he lifted one hand and stroked slowly, softly down Illya's cheek, a featherlight touch with the tip of his finger.

Illya didn't move, but his eyelids fluttered once, briefly, as though in spite of himself. 

The atmosphere in the room had undergone a subtle change. Napoleon's skin tingled, and his pulse sped up, anticipation thrumming in his veins. What were Illya's expectations here? What would he allow? What did he want?

He ran his thumb over Illya's lips, and they opened slightly. Illya was standing perfectly still, his gaze fixed on Napoleon, letting Napoleon take the lead. Napoleon couldn't resist the clear invitation. He bent his head to kiss Illya's open lips.

For a moment there he had been beginning to think the whole evening was going to turn out to be a disaster. He'd been wrong, however. Wrong a thousand times over. Illya melted against him, soft and welcoming. The next minute, as though a switch had flipped, Illya was surging forward, taking over the kiss. Napoleon let him, feeling his heart start to speed out of control. He hadn't been wrong about the energy lurking beneath the surface of this man.

Illya was tugging at Napoleon's clothes now, pulling him closer. His hands were sliding under Napoleon's shirt, searching for skin. Napoleon couldn't suppress a gasp at the first touch of Illya's nails, raking the skin of his lower back.

He slid his hands up Illya's arms in turn, relishing the feeling of firm muscle under his touch, sharply defined biceps and triceps flexing as Illya moved.

Illya turned his head, leaning even closer so that his lips brushed Napoleon's ear, a warm soft touch that sent a shiver through Napoleon.

"Come to bed," he murmured, and Napoleon came willingly.

.. .. ..

After Kuryakin left the hotel room the next morning, Napoleon washed and dressed, and then called the cab company to delay the pick-up hour. That left him time for breakfast in the hotel dining room, with a copy of the Wiener Zeitung.

He asked the cab driver to drop him at a train station a few streets away from UNCLE HQ, and walked the rest of the way on foot. The main entrance -- or at least, the only one he'd used in the two weeks he'd been here -- was through the back room of a shop specializing in sheet music. He was given a visitor's badge at the front desk, and shown straight to Lehmann's office.

Michael Lehmann was Number One, Section One at the Vienna office. He was a short, jowled man who had supposedly been one of Plieseis's resistance fighters during the war. Now he had a reputation for intransigence and bullheadedness, tempered by a sharp, intelligent mind. Vienna was only a regional HQ, not one of the Big Five, but its proximity to the Iron Curtain made Lehmann's position more important than it otherwise would have been.

Two other people were sitting at the table in his office when Napoleon got there. One was Fabien Moncel, a Swiss scientist who'd given a seminar last week on recent advances in computing. The other was Illya Kuryakin.

"I believe you gentlemen already know one another," Lehmann said, waving a hand vaguely between the three men.

Kuryakin nodded coolly. Moncel gave him a more genial greeting, and Napoleon took a seat at the table.

"Mr Waverley has agreed to loan you to us for an indefinite period, Mr Solo," Lehmann began.

Napoleon managed to keep his eyebrows from shooting up in surprise.

"Oh?" he said, in a tone of polite interest that hid his dismay.

"You'll work on one particular assignment, and stay here until it's over, one way or the other." Lehmann opened the dossier that lay on the desk in front of him, and picked up the first page. Napoleon caught a glimpse of what looked very much like a copy of a report he himself had written.

"A month ago you were part of a team that blew up a THRUSH laboratory complex in the Rockies," Lehmann went on. "I believe you searched the complex exhaustively first? And then spent several hours as a captive?"

Napoleon nodded. Several extremely unpleasant hours, for all that they were summarized in just one line in the report Lehmann held.

"So you would recognize some of the scientists who escaped the explosion, and any of the equipment that was saved?"

"I expect so, yes."

"Good." He closed the folder and opened another. "According to our latest intelligence reports, that equipment has been transferred to Europe, along with the contents of several other THRUSH laboratories. It seems they're now at the critical stage of plans to build a massive weapon somewhere in central Europe, perhaps even here in Vienna."

"What sort of weapon?"

"That will be your job to find out, Mr Solo. You'll be partnered with Mr Kuryakin, and Mr Moncel will provide technical support."

Napoleon kept his surprise well hidden as his gaze flickered to Kuryakin. He felt he should have seen that one coming, but it made no sense -- surely Kuryakin wasn't a field agent? Kuryakin himself was still wearing the same blank expression he'd had since the start of the briefing.

"I suggest the three of you schedule a meeting for this afternoon, as soon as Mr Solo has had a chance to familiarize himself with the files," Lehmann said. 

His voice had a ring of finality, bringing the meeting to a close. 

Napoleon spoke up hurriedly.

"And what about the other agents on that team in the Rockies with me? There were two out of Berlin HQ, in fact."

He had been rather looking forward to getting home -- and wasn't terribly keen on working with Kuryakin, either.

Lehmann turned wide shocked eyes on him. It seemed he wasn't accustomed to his agents questioning him.

"Besides the fact that you're already here in Vienna," he said finally, "you're the only one still in the field at the moment."

Napoleon suppressed a wince. He knew Section Two's casualty rate was high, but it was never pleasant to be reminded of it.

Lehmann snapped the file folder shut and pushed back his chair.

"That will be all, gentlemen."

The three agents left the office together.

"I suppose you'll be taking him down to Personnel," Moncel said to Kuryakin. "Let's meet at four, all right? See you later, Solo."

He disappeared down the corridor, leaving Napoleon alone with Kuryakin. Napoleon glanced at him, thinking about how to play this. He noticed Kuryakin had managed to shave at some point since he left the hotel. His cheeks were smooth, without a trace of the stubble Napoleon had felt when he ran a finger along that jawline the night before.

"This way," Kuryakin indicated with a nod of his head.

His manner was neither familiar nor cold, but perfectly neutral, as though they had never met. He was playing it cool, apparently. Napoleon was happy to do the same.

Kuryakin took Napoleon to Personnel, had a few words with the agent at the desk and left. Half an hour later, Napoleon had a car key, the keys to an UNCLE service apartment, and an aching wrist from signing a mountain of paperwork.

Just as he finished, Kuryakin appeared again.

"Follow me," he said.

Napoleon bristled at the peremptory tone, but he decided now was not the time to protest.

Kuryakin led him upstairs and through a maze of corridors, stopping at the door to a small office.

"Your desk," he said, nodding at one of two desks in the room. "Your key locks the office door. I've left a few files on the desk for you." He looked at his watch. "I'll be back in an hour and twenty minutes."

With that, he left. Napoleon sat down at his desk, which was empty except for the cardboard file folder, one pen, one pencil, and a block of paper. He looked across at the other desk. It was obviously in use, its surface covered with pens and papers, and Napoleon wondered if it were Kuryakin's. It was impossible to tell: the desk was completely impersonal.

Napoleon sighed, settled down and started to read. It was heavy going. Plowing through technical reports had never been his favorite thing to do, and that was what the documents mostly consisted of: reports from agents who'd infiltrated THRUSH laboratories across the world.

Kuryakin reappeared as promised just before lunchtime.

"I suggest we go out to eat," he said by way of greeting.

Napoleon nodded, assuming that Kuryakin wanted to be able to talk out of UNCLE's earshot.

They bought sandwiches at a small kiosk on the street, and then sat down to eat in the middle of a vast paved plaza, on the edge of a fountain that had been switched off for the winter.

"I make it a policy never to sleep with the same man twice," Kuryakin said abruptly.

"Ah...very wise of you."

"In fact," Kuryakin added, sounding more thoughtful now and less aggressive, "I usually make it a policy never to so much as spend the entire night with a man."

"I have a similar policy. Most of the time, at least. Guess we slipped up last night."

Kuryakin shrugged.

"A one-off lapse."

"Yes. Well, I'm glad that's clear between us."

Kuryakin didn't answer, just unwrapped his sandwich and started to wolf it down.

Napoleon took a bite of his own sandwich.

"I had no idea you were a field agent," he said after a moment.

"I often work in the lab," Kuryakin said with a shrug. After a pause, he added, "I can shoot straight, however, if that's what you're worried about."

Napoleon wasn't sure whether that was supposed to get a rise out of him. The words were aggressive, but Kuryakin's voice was inflectionless.

"Good to know," Napoleon said neutrally.

They both took a good long look at each other, sizing each other up, this time as potential partners.

"How long have you been in UNCLE?" Napoleon asked without beating about the bush. They didn't know yet what this assignment might involve, or what potentially dangerous situations it could lead them into. He had a perfectly legitimate reason for wanting to know more about his partner than he did now. Besides the fact that he still found Kuryakin as fascinating as he had in the Brauhaus last night.

"Since 1956."

"I joined in '54. Before that I was in the Army. Korea." He paused. "You?"

He had a sudden, irrational fear that Kuryakin would say he'd been in Korea too, on the other side, though the Soviet involvement there had been so low-scale that it wasn't very likely.

"Naval Intelligence."

Napoleon relaxed. Only the Soviet Air Force had been involved on the North Korean side.

He didn't press Kuryakin for the details of his Naval days, because he knew he was very unlikely to be able to give them. Instead he concentrated on Kuryakin's time in UNCLE.

"Do you mostly work with a partner or alone?"

"Usually as part of a larger team. It's how Lehmann likes to run things. And you -- you like to work alone, I hear."

Napoleon gave him a questioning look.

"You have quite a reputation, even on this side of the Atlantic."

Napoleon frowned, not quite sure he liked where this was going.

"For being difficult to work with?"

"No, for being given to pretentious displays of bravado, and foolhardy one-man missions."

"Oh," Napoleon said, stung.

"And for being the best field agent in the Northwest," Kuryakin added in exactly the same tone.

"Oh?" 

Napoleon was beginning to feel like a table tennis ball.

Kuryakin took another bite and chewed. He seemed to be watching a pigeon hopping across the square.

"It will be an interesting experience for me, to work with the next Northwestern CEA."

"That's not decided yet," Napoleon said quickly, although he knew gossip had it that Waverly would promote Napoleon to CEA, once Miller retired.

Kuryakin went on eating in silence, and Napoleon did the same. They had attracted a small flock of pigeons while they ate, the birds hopping around the flat paving stones of the plaza. Napoleon watched two of them tussle over a crumb he'd dropped.

"Ever come up against THRUSH before?" he asked after a while.

Kuryakin snorted.

"I have spent more hours of my life in THRUSH dungeons than I care to think about."

Napoleon had to laugh at that. 

"Maybe this partnership is a bad idea. I seem to have quite a knack for being captured too."

"And for escaping, clearly." Before Napoleon could decide whether that was a note of admiration in Kuryakin's voice, the other agent added, "However, you eat too slowly. Come on, we should get back to work."

Napoleon spent the afternoon reading, though he also found the time to place a long-distance call to New York, to the new girl in Records, and apologize for missing the date they'd planned for the following night.

He got back just in time for the start of a long meeting with Moncel and Kuryakin, prolonged over an evening meal in the commissary. It seemed it was Moncel who had first noticed the flood of new parts from THRUSH labs into central Europe, and gathered enough information to conclude that it was a new weapon. He had accumulated a large pile of paperwork which Kuryakin was now analyzing. 

It was long past dark by the time they headed out to the UNCLE parking lot. Napoleon's new car turned out to be a tiny Fiat 500. As he drove out of the UNCLE complex, he stuck close to the Citroen driven by Kuryakin, who had offered to show him the way to his apartment. Apparently they were housed in the same building. 

It turned out to be a postwar apartment block on the outskirts of the city. Napoleon's apartment was on the tenth floor. There were stacks of canned food in the kitchen cupboards, and a haphazard collection of supplies in the bathroom, left by previous occupants. The apartment had obviously been used by a succession of short-term visitors to the Vienna office.

Kuryakin had accompanied him as far as the door to the apartment.

"I've probably got some fresh bread in my flat," he offered.

Napoleon noted the word 'flat', and wondered if Kuryakin had spent some time living in Britain. He certainly sounded as though he had.

"Thanks," he said. "That would be much appreciated."

Left alone, he crossed to the window, and opened the shutters. Spread out before him were the lights of the city, glittering orange and white, and the wide, dark line of the Danube. Beyond that, less than forty miles away, lay Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the start of the Soviet bloc.

He turned away from the window, and set to the task of unpacking his suitcase. He was used to winding up somewhere unexpected with no notice, and had everything he would need for the next few days with him in his suitcase -- except fresh food.

Kuryakin returned within a few minutes, carrying black bread, a slab of cheese and half a salami sausage.

Napoleon smiled.

"Thanks."

"Don't get used to it," Kuryakin said.

But his expression was softer than his voice, and when he said goodnight Napoleon thought he detected a hint of a smile.

.. .. ..

When Napoleon arrived at his office the next morning, Kuryakin was sitting at the other desk, sorting an enormous stack of cardboard folders into several piles. There were another two piles already lying on Napoleon's desk. His heart sank at the size of them, but he wasn't about to show that.

"Good morning, Mr Kuryakin," he said cheerfully. 

"Ah, good," Kuryakin said, placing the last folder carefully in the pile on the left. "You're just in time."

He was wearing a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, and there was something strangely sexy about them that Napoleon couldn't quite put his finger on. He snuck a second look as he sat down.

"First stack to read is the stack on your right," Kuryakin said briskly. "Dossier on a stealth raid on a THRUSH laboratory in the Algarve. I presume you can read Portuguese?"

Napoleon opened the first folder, and found a sheaf of blueprints stolen from THRUSH, and a report by the UNCLE agents who'd done the stealing. He settled down to read, separating out any blueprints that seemed to correspond to machinery or experimental apparatus he himself had seen in the Rockies, before he'd been obliged to blow everything up. 

Then Kuryakin got him to describe everything he could remember of the laboratory in the Rockies, pushing and prodding him until he recalled details he couldn't even remember knowing in the first place. The Russian took copious notes, his hand flying across the page as Napoleon talked. He seemed particularly interested when Napoleon mentioned the rubies.

"Well, they looked like rubies," Napoleon said. "And that's what was written on a box nearby. But they weren't cut like gemstones. They were cylindrical, and the two ends were covered in some kind of silvery substance."

"Dimensions?"

"About an inch and a half to two inches long, and about a quarter inch across."

"Approx forty by six millimeters," Kuryakin muttered, writing it in his notebook.

"And one of them was placed in the middle of some sort of experimental apparatus."

Kuryakin handed him a piece of paper and a propelling pencil.

"Can you draw it?"

Kuryakin clearly thought he was on to something, but for the moment he was keeping it to himself. Napoleon had several years' seniority on Kuryakin, and could have insisted on being brought up to speed right away. He didn't, though, mostly because he rather suspected Kuryakin was getting a kick out of bossing him around a little. Napoleon smiled to himself at the thought, and set to work on his sketch.

They'd been at it for hours now, and soon Napoleon's stomach gave a loud, unmistakeable rumble.

Kuryakin raised his head, and threw Napoleon a look which he rather thought should be interpreted as amusement.

"I trust you can find your own way to the commissary?" he said.

"You're not going to eat?"

"I have to go out."

Napoleon ate lunch in the company of two local agents he'd met through the training course. After his meal he went to Records, where he'd already made a handful of conquests in the two weeks he'd been here. It didn't take him long to charm his way into a look at Kuryakin's file -- the short version, at least, which was only classified 'restricted' instead of 'top secret'.

Kuryakin's full name was Illya Nikolaievich Kuryakin, and he held the rank of lieutenant in the Soviet Navy. Napoleon had wondered if he might be KGB or ex-KGB, as many of the Soviet agents in UNCLE were, but that probably wouldn't be marked in this easily accessible file. He ran his gaze down the few lines of information that were there. Studies in Paris and England, back to the Soviet Union for a few years before joining UNCLE. Survival School, a posting in Berlin and a transfer to Vienna. There wasn't anything about his experience in the field. Napoleon just hoped they wouldn't be getting in any gunfights together, because he had no idea how Kuryakin would hold up.

The office was empty when Napoleon got back. He sat down to finish his sketch. When Kuryakin finally appeared, half an hour later, he was carrying a big stack of books and photostats stamped "Österreichische Zentralbibliothek für Physik".

He nodded absently at Napoleon, and dumped the stack on his desk. Then he sat down, put on his glasses, and soon was deep in a heavy cloth-bound volume.

Napoleon had finished his sketch. He still had a stack of reports to read, but they were looking even more unappealing now than they had this morning. He was used to having more paperwork than he would have liked after missions, and sometimes before, but not usually quite this much.

He got up and drifted over to Kuryakin's desk. It was covered in photostats of what looked like scientific articles. Napoleon read a few of the titles. 

_'Etude expérimentale de la lumière émise par un laser à rubis.'_

_'Laser conditions in semiconductors.'_

_'Stimulated optical radiation in ruby.'_

The article Kuryakin was reading at the moment was entitled _'Generatsiya, usilyeniye i indikatsiya infrakrasnovo i opticheskovo izluchenii s pomoshchyu kvantovykh sistem'_.

Napoleon stared at that mouthful for a moment. He finally figured out it was something about generating infrared and optical radiation with the help of quantum systems.

Kuryakin's gaze flicked up to meet his.

"You speak Russian? Or read it, at least?"

" _Nemnozhko_ ," Napoleon said modestly.

Kuryakin hmm'ed.

Napoleon indicated the pile of photostats at Kuryakin's elbow.

"May I?" 

"Go ahead."

He took _'Etude expérimentale de la lumière émise par un laser à rubis'_ , because it seemed to be the shortest, and because there was an illustration on the first page that looked rather like the apparatus he'd been trying to describe to Kuryakin this morning. He brought the paper back to his desk and started to read. 

He had picked up a fair amount of technical knowledge over his years in UNCLE, from a combination of specialist seminars and many hours spent plowing determinedly through the reports put out by Section VIII for agent briefings. In this article, however, he kept tripping up over one particular word he didn't know.

He shot a glance at Kuryakin, who was just exchanging one file for another. Napoleon took the opportunity to interrupt him.

"What's this 'laser' thing?"

Kuryakin looked up.

"Like a maser, but with visible light," he said. Then, surely sensing that wasn't enough of an explanation, he went on, "It's an instrument that produces very intense, very highly focussed light of just one wavelength -- just one color. It's based on quantum mechanical principles."

"A raygun?"

Kuryakin raised both eyebrows.

"You know, like in the movies." He made his hand into a gun and aimed it at Kuryakin. "Shoots magic energy beams and your enemies just vanish."

"If you like," Kuryakin said, sounding doubtful.

"I thought that stuff was just science fiction."

"It's an extremely recent discovery. The first working model was built only last year, and nobody has ever managed to produce a light beam intense enough to have any sort of potential as a weapon. But THRUSH obviously think they can." He gave Napoleon an amused look. "However, I don't think it will be making anyone's enemies 'magically disappear'. It can do plenty of damage without that."

"And this is where the rubies come in?"

"Exactly. That's where the energy amplification happens, producing the intense beam of light."

"So that's it? That's the weapon THRUSH has been working on so furiously throughout the world?"

"I think so."

"Nice work," Napoleon said, genuinely admiring.

He thought he caught a hint of pleasure on Kuryakin's face, before it vanished.

"But we still need to find out where this laser weapon is, and what it might be used on," Kuryakin pointed out.

"Before it's used."

"Preferably, yes."

They returned to work with renewed motivation. 

It began to grow late, and Napoleon started to think about dinner and sleep.

He had considered lining up a date for the evening. More than one of the Vienna office girls had made sure to let him know how pleased they were he was staying a little longer. But aside from the fact that he was in the middle of a mission, he didn't want Kuryakin to think... well, he wasn't sure what Kuryakin would in fact think, or even whether the man had any interest in Napoleon's sex life at all.

In the end, Napoleon hadn't made a date, and so he went on working his way through his stack of files.

At some point, Kuryakin looked up from his own work.

"You don't have to stay here all night, you know."

"Do you always work so late?" Napoleon almost asked, but reconsidered. He didn't want to say something that could be misinterpreted as criticism, or some kind of slur on Kuryakin's lack of a social life. He had already picked up on the fact that Kuryakin had a sizable fanclub among the female agents, and a reputation for being completely unsociable.

"Almost done," he said instead, with one of his more charming smiles, which was wasted because Kuryakin had bent his head to his work again.

Instead of doing the same, Napoleon went on gazing at Kuryakin, suddenly thoughtful. He was amused to realize he'd been deliberately hanging around because his subconscious was hoping for the chance to chat with Kuryakin about something -- anything -- other than work. Of course the view wasn't bad either.

It was obvious that he'd be here all night if he waited for Kuryakin to start a conversation, however. Napoleon decided he would just have to dive straight in.

"How long have you been living in Vienna?"

Kuryakin looked up, clearly surprised by the interruption, but he answered readily enough all the same.

"Three months. Before that I was in Berlin. As I'm sure you know from my personnel file."

Napoleon's eyebrows shot up.

"Ah -- "

Kuryakin snorted.

"You're not going to try to tell me you haven't sneaked a look at it, are you? Because I've certainly managed to take a look at yours, Mr Two New Suits a Month."

Napoleon felt his eyes widen.

"That's in my file?" 

He had taken a look at his file in New York, of course, but he hadn't thought to wonder what was on file about him in other offices.

Kuryakin nodded.

"Along with the fact that you should never be left alone with a bag of party balloons and a roll of Scotch tape."

Napoleon's jaw dropped.

"That's never -- "

Kuryakin was looking at him gravely, his face the picture of sincerity.

That was when Napoleon finally caught on. This was the same slyly playful Illya he'd known that night at the hotel. Napoleon hadn't seen him since; in fact, he'd been starting to wonder if he'd imagined him.

He chuckled.

"You almost had me there."

Kuryakin gave him a look of pure innocence.

"Though I still can't believe that story about the balloons made it as far as Vienna," Napoleon added. "It was all grossly exaggerated, you know." He glanced at his watch. "I'm starting to feel it's time for dinner."

"The commissary will be closed at this hour. However -- " Kuryakin got to his feet and reached for his coat. "I know a place. If you like?"

Napoleon would have liked to eat at home, now that he finally had access to a kitchen and dining table after two weeks of living in a hotel. However, he felt that inviting Kuryakin to his apartment would be far too open to misunderstandings and awkwardness, and he had a feeling Kuryakin was operating on the same principles.

"Sure. I'd like that," he said.

The place turned out to be a cross between a coffee bar and a lower-end restaurant. It specialized in simple, straightforward cooking, with a menu consisting of a handful of different types of schnitzel, with a choice of boiled or fried potatoes. There was just one cozy little room, with lots of tables jammed into limited space. The decor was very traditional, wood panelling and heavy brass beer taps, but the radio was blaring this year's American music. The contrast seemed jarring to Napoleon but he supposed it wasn't really.

He and Kuryakin managed to find a free table in a corner. They talked about work first, and the progress they'd made that afternoon, what little there was of it.

"You're holding up pretty well," Kuryakin said.

Napoleon raised his eyebrows.

"I am?"

"The paperwork, I mean. I was afraid you might be one of those hotshots who thinks with his gun, and can't even type his own name."

"Thanks, I guess."

Kuryakin gave him a dead-pan look, and set about tackling his schnitzel.

Napoleon was hungry too, and it was a few minutes before they made an attempt to talk again.

"This is excellent," Napoleon said. "I can never get the coating to come out right, myself. It always ends up soggy."

Kuryakin's eyebrows shot up.

"You make your own schnitzel?"

"Well, I've tried. It wasn't a success." He smiled to himself, thinking back to that night. "In fact, I think I'd qualify it as a disaster, taking into account that the meal was supposed to impress a lady. And of course I only have myself to blame, because I know perfectly well you don't test a new recipe on a date night."

"I didn't think the infamous Napoleon Solo ever failed at seducing someone."

Napoleon gave him a sharp look, but Kuryakin's voice had been mild and he didn't seem to mean anything in particular by it. Now that Napoleon thought about it, it had been rather clumsy of him to bring up a former date. He decided to change the subject.

"So, you don't cook, then?"

Kuryakin shrugged.

"I've always worked in places with commissaries or canteens."

"What's that got to do with anything? Good food is a pleasure. An art! And you won't get that in a canteen."

"Cooking takes time that could be spent doing something else."

"Like what?" Napoleon challenged, wondering what Kuryakin _did_ do in his spare time.

Kuryakin shrugged.

"Reading. Listening to the radio. Cleaning the bathroom. Scrubbing the floor."

Napoleon snorted.

"Those are your hobbies, are they?" he said, playing along. "Scrubbing the floor?"

Kuryakin didn't disappoint him.

"I was in the Navy, you know," he said, all innocence.

Napoleon laughed.

"And did you see the world?"

Kuryakin blinked.

"That's supposed to mean something to me, isn't it?"

"It's a saying. US Navy recruitment posters. 'Join the Navy, see the world!'"

"Ah. No, actually, I didn't. UNCLE has proven much more agreeable in that respect."

"Join UNCLE, see the inside of cheap hotels and THRUSH satrapys in every European capital?"

Kuryakin's lips twitched.

"Well, something like that."

A comfortable silence fell between them. Napoleon returned his attention to his schnitzel, which was indeed particularly good. He took a swig of the beer Kuryakin had recommended.

The pair of young students at the neighboring table had been replaced by a middle-aged couple. Since their arrival the lady had been extolling the virtues of her brother Maxim in a long monologue, dwelling particularly on the unfavorable comparison to her husband. The husband himself was wearing a murderous scowl, and sawing away viciously at his steak in a way that made Napoleon think poor Maxim could perhaps benefit from police protection.

He couldn't resist leaning forward to say in an undertone, " _Tebe ne kazhetsya, chto on seichas votknyot nozh v neschastnogo Maksima vmesto steika?_

Kuryakin's gaze flickered to the other table and back, and he suppressed a snort of laughter.

"So you do speak Russian," he said in the same language. "Very useful."

They'd been speaking German since they left the UNCLE building, with the spy's natural habit of blending in -- even if Napoleon never did quite blend in.

"As with most languages, only enough to get by," Napoleon said.

"A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that."

"No? I can see you never told a Spanish speaker you were 'muy excitado'."

Napoleon let out a snort of laughter.

"I hope you weren't talking to a woman?"

"I was talking to an ambassador's wife," Kuryakin said, dead-pan.

Napoleon laughed harder.

"I can't really imagine you being very excited, though," he said, and then felt a sudden, rare flush of color come into his cheeks. "Ah, I mean, excited in the English sense, of course." He had already seen Kuryakin 'muy excitado', a few nights ago.

Kuryakin's cheeks had colored too. He was clearly thinking of the same thing.

"I believe I was trying to be sarcastic at the time. It didn't work, obviously."

"No."

Napoleon had finished eating. He laid down his knife and fork, thinking that part of him would rather like to see Kuryakin in that state again. It would be very unwise, of course, and not something he planned on actually doing -- even if Kuryakin had been showing any signs of encouragement, which he wasn't.

The waiter came by at that moment to take their empty plates, and propose coffee.

After dinner they walked back to HQ, where they'd left their cars. It was a clear, crisp night, and while he waited for Kuryakin to unlock the parking lot gate, Napoleon threw his head back to look up at the night sky. The city lights swamped out the fainter stars, but he could still make out familiar constellations, slightly shifted.

Not for the first time recently, Napoleon imagined what it would be like to be up there, looking down, like Gagarin just last month. He had seen photos taken from one of the satellites of the new US aeronautics and space agency, but to actually be up there -- it must be breathtaking.

Uncannily, Kuryakin echoed his thoughts.

"How strange to think there's been a man up there."

"Disquieting," Napoleon said. "If they can put satellites up, and dogs, and men, then they can put missile launchers too -- and maneuver them to above any point on the globe." He paused, and then glanced apologetically at Kuryakin. "And by 'they' I don't mean the Soviet Union in particular, but anyone. Any maniac with enough money."

Kuryakin was still staring up at the sky, but he made a noise of agreement in his throat.

Napoleon didn't want to finish the night on such an ominous note.

He cleared his throat.

"Thanks for the company tonight."

Kuryakin lowered his gaze to Napoleon.

"Any time," he said quietly.

He pushed open the gate, and Napoleon followed him in.

.. .. ..

When Napoleon came back from lunch the next day, Kuryakin had a city street plan spread out on his desk. Napoleon bent over his shoulder to take a look.

"Budapest?" he guessed, based on the language used for the street names and legend. Not that he spoke Hungarian, but it was very hard to mix the language up with anything else.

"Yes." Kuryakin picked up a stack of photographs that had been lying on his desk, and held them out to Napoleon. "Have a look at these. They were taken by an UNCLE agent in a THRUSH laboratory in the Carpathians two months ago."

The photographs were of pages from a laboratory notebook. Kuryakin pointed out one particular page, which contained a sketch of a circular structure with spokes.

"Bicycle wheel?" Napoleon guessed.

"Look at the scale." 

There was a short black line to the right of the sketch, bearing the label "10 m".

"Is that supposed to be ten meters?" Napoleon frowned at the sketch for a few moments, and then it clicked. "It's a Ferris wheel."

"Exactly."

"But why on earth -- ?"

Kuryakin tapped the pile of photographs.

"From what I read here, experimental results from THRUSH suggest the power of a laser can be increased a thousandfold via a coupling between a certain rotational frequency and the quantum mechanical processes which lead to light amplification."

"I see," said Napoleon, not seeing.

"You mount the laser on some large rotating structure, and just like that, you have a weapon."

Napoleon frowned.

"Such as a Ferris wheel? Not very transportable, is it?"

"No, but deadly effective all the same."

"And they already have a working model, I suppose?"

"I believe so. And based on other details in the notebook, it seems to be mounted on the Ferris wheel in Budapest's Vidampark." He turned back to the city map, and placed his finger on a green rectangle to the east of the Danube. "Here."

"What's the range of this weapon?"

"Not that big. Maybe one, two hundred meters maximum."

"So what's the target?" Napoleon asked, bending over the city map. He saw Kuryakin had already pencilled a circle around the amusement park.

"I don't know. There are several important civic buildings in that area, but not anything that I'd have thought would interest THRUSH."

Napoleon peered more closely at the map, but it didn't enlighten him any further. He straightened up.

"We need to see Lehmann."

First they went to Fabien Moncel, who agreed completely with Kuryakin's conclusions. On the strength of that, they got clearance from Lehmann to go to Budapest. It was only a hundred and fifty miles away: they could drive there and back in a day. There was no UNCLE office there, but they could expect assistance from the Hungarian secret service's UNCLE liaison officer. By the time everything was arranged, it was late evening, and they set a departure time of early the following morning.

Napoleon had hardly been home five minutes when there came a knock at the door of his apartment.

"What are you going to wear tomorrow?" Kuryakin demanded as soon as the front door was shut behind him.

Napoleon was taken aback.

"Clothes, probably," he said with a raised eyebrow.

Kuryakin scowled at him.

"No jeans, I hope. Because that's something you can't buy in the Soviet bloc. No leather jackets either."

"I don't even own any," Napoleon protested, feeling his sartorial reputation was being insulted.

Kuryakin was still waiting for a proper answer to his original question.

Napoleon sighed, and went to the bedroom. Kuryakin followed him in. He shook his head as soon as he saw the suit Napoleon had laid out for the next day.

"Too flashy. Nobody owns a suit like that in Budapest. Not many people in New York do either, I'd imagine."

Napoleon was sure that was a criticism, but of what exactly? His decadent ways? Surely not his sartorial taste, because Kuryakin didn't have a leg to stand on in that regard.

Kuryakin stepped up beside Napoleon, peered into his closet, and picked out a slightly older suit.

"This will do. In any case it will be covered by your overcoat most of the time, I imagine, and that's a little more suitably... discreet. Now turn out your coat pockets."

Napoleon frowned. But Kuryakin's tone wasn't peremptory, just practical, and it seemed ridiculous to refuse.

Soon there lay on the bed a handkerchief, a spare communicator battery, a handful of Schillings, one US dollar and a New York subway token. Kuryakin sorted the latter two objects out.

"I would have done that this evening," Napoleon protested. "I have been on one or two missions before, you know. Including in the Eastern bloc."

"I'm sure you have."

"What were you looking for, exactly?" Napoleon asked, curious.

"Anything that might be considered blackmarket goods, and give the border guards an excuse to hold us up. Chewing gum, cigarettes, condoms..."

Napoleon felt his eyebrows shoot up.

"You don't have condoms in the Soviet bloc?"

Kuryakin gave him a pained look.

"Of course we do. But they're very poor quality. To the point of being rather painful to use, in fact."

"Oh?" said Napoleon. It was hard not to imagine Kuryakin gaining personal experience in the matter. His mind happily supplied him with visuals: some hazy, ill-defined partner, an underfurnished bedroom somewhere in the Soviet Union, and Illya in glorious technicolor, sweat glistening on his bare skin.

Napoleon suddenly realized they were in his bedroom. In fact, Kuryakin was sitting on his bed.

He was very tempted to try a little mild flirtation, at the very least a suggestive look or two. If it was badly received, though, it could sour their mission tomorrow. Reluctantly, he chose the more professional route. He picked up his coat and began to stuff everything back into its pockets.

"I'll come by at six tomorrow morning," Kuryakin said, getting to his feet.

"Okay, good."

He accompanied Kuryakin out as far as the apartment's front door.

"Good night, Kuryakin," he said briskly.

To his surprise, Kuryakin gave him a warm smile, albeit a brief one.

"Good night, Solo."

.. .. ..

The next morning, after a brief discussion about who would drive, Napoleon ended up in the passenger seat with the map.

They drove in silence at first, out of the city and east along the Danube. Napoleon stared out of the window, his mind busy with the coming mission.

"You're very restless," Kuryakin said after some time.

"Am I? Not used to being in the passenger seat, I suppose. I always drive myself."

"In your big American car?"

Napoleon wasn't quite sure how to interpret that.

"I have a Chevy," he said. "But in New York one doesn't really drive."

"I've seen pictures. Yellow cabs everywhere."

"Never been?"

"When I was a student there was a physics conference I wanted to attend there. But I couldn't get a visa, of course."

"Maybe things will change now that the Soviet Union has loosened up visa restrictions for Americans," Napoleon suggested. "Or more likely, you'll get to go on UNCLE business some day, and won't have to worry about all that."

Kuryakin hummed, noncommittally.

"Or maybe you don't give a damn anyway," Napoleon said, suddenly feeling presumptuous. Just because New York was the center of the world to him --

"I would like to visit a jazz club in Greenwich Village," Kuryakin admitted, unexpectedly.

"You would?"

Napoleon had never been in one, but into his mind flashed an image of himself and Kuryakin, sitting in a warm, dark, smoky room, surrounded by the seductive strains of jazz music. He shook it off.

"Well, here's hoping you do some day."

Outside the window the countryside rolled past, a flat, featureless, late-winter landscape, tinged with the early morning light. Traffic was light, and Napoleon, with his eye on the map, could see they were making good time.

"You said you'd been to Budapest once before," he remarked after they'd covered a few miles. "For work?"

Kuryakin shook his head.

"Gymnastics competition. I was still a student."

"Gymnastics?" Napoleon echoed, surprised.

"I represented the University of Tbilisi at an international level. I saw several of the capitals of Eastern Europe that way. Including Vienna, as a matter of fact. That was more than ten years ago, during the Occupation. I only saw the Soviet sector, of course."

That reduced Napoleon to silence for a while. He was busy imagining a younger Illya Kuryakin in a tight white outfit, muscles flexing in his shoulders as he swung on the bars.

Soon, they were approaching the border. Kuryakin slowed down as soon as they reached the first enormous warning signs, and finally rolled to a stop at the border post itself.

"I've never liked this," Napoleon muttered. He'd already been back and forth across the Iron Curtain more times than he could count. "I always have this strange feeling I won't get back out again."

Kuryakin opened his mouth. Napoleon had a sudden intuition he was about to say "me too". But then he simply shut his mouth again.

Napoleon wondered if Kuryakin considered himself to be an escapee, or to be an exile.

The border formalities took a good half an hour, including a search of the car and a telephone call to the border guards' superiors. That wasn't surprising -- it was probably the first time the guards had ever seen an UNCLE passport. They often got that reaction. However, the passports did have the advantage of not containing the bearer's nationality, and not needing a visa stamp.

"Good thing I didn't bring that box of chewing gum," Napoleon joked as soon as they were on their way again.

"Don't joke about it," Kuryakin said sharply. "Just remember silence is often a virtue in the east."

"You're the boss," Napoleon said easily. "You're the one on home territory here."

"I'm not. Hungary is not exactly a willing member of the Warsaw Pact, nor particularly fond of the Soviet Union."

"No, I suppose not," Napoleon said, thinking of the violent events in Budapest a few years earlier.

They drove on across open countryside again.

"You don't speak Hungarian, do you?" Napoleon said. He'd noticed it at the border crossing.

"No."

"For some reason I assumed you would."

"Why?"

"Well... you seem to be able to do just about everything else."

"Hungarian is a very difficult language, you know, and very different from everything else. It's not something you pick up just in case you might need it some day."

Napoleon had to smile at the aggrieved note in Kuryakin's voice. Apparently his sense of amour propre was much stronger than he'd like to admit.

"Fortunately we have our Hungarian agent," Napoleon said lightly.

Soon they reached the outskirts of Budapest, and Napoleon unfolded the map to guide Illya into the city center.

Budapest was Vienna's twin, the second Austro-Hungarian capital, the Pearl of the Danube. It gave Napoleon the same feeling as he got in Vienna, and so many other European cities. Everywhere he looked he saw beautiful historic buildings, seemingly older and certainly more ornate than anything in New York. Yet he knew most of what he saw must have been built -- rebuilt, rather -- less than fifteen years ago.

They left the car in a side-street near the Varosliget, the woods in the middle of the city. Their Hungarian contact was waiting for them at the edge of the woods, standing by a newspaper kiosk. He was a giant by the name of Lakatos, whose overcoat hung untidily over his enormous, square frame.

He seemed cautious and reserved with them, but willing to help nonetheless. Napoleon knew he'd been involved in several other UNCLE missions over the past few years.

"Where to first?" the Hungarian asked. "Vidampark is about five hundred meters in that direction." He pointed into the woods.

Napoleon looked around. It was a bright, crisp day in February and the tree-lined alley they stood in was crowded with people.

"There'll be too many people in the amusement park at the moment," he said. "But we think THRUSH also have a satrapy nearby. Let's start with that."

Kuryakin had a sketch of the outside of the building, drawn by the same double agent who'd provided most of the laboratory notes they'd been working from.

"It's somewhere within five hundred meters of the Varosliget."

Lakatos studied the sketch for a moment, his brow creased in thought. Finally he nodded.

"There are a few places I can think of that this might correspond to. Let me show you."

In Lakatos' car, they cruised through the surrounding streets, until one of the buildings the Hungarian pointed out caught Napoleon's nose. 

"That one," he said.

It was a narrow building squeezed in between two others, with a nondescript doorway up a few steps. Beside the door was a brass plaque which made it look like a doctor's or dentist's office.

Lakatos looked doubtful.

"How do you know?"

Napoleon gave him a wry smile.

"When you've been in as many THRUSH hideouts as I have, you develop a sixth sense for them."

"I agree," Kuryakin said from the back seat. "Can you pull up around the corner?"

They found their way into a small side-street which ran behind the building, and from there into an internal courtyard, where the building's back entrance was. There was no sign of any guards, or in fact any activity at all.

Lakatos suggested he keep watch outside. He clearly didn't want to wander around a THRUSH hideout with two agents he didn't trust. Napoleon didn't blame him.

Kuryakin picked the lock on one of the lower windows with minimal difficulty, and Lakatos hoisted them through. They were in a small, empty, cupboard-like room which gave onto a corridor, just as empty.

In fact, the further they advanced into the building, the more of the same old thing they found. Empty offices and empty storage rooms, filled with empty cupboards and filing cabinets, and the occasional piece of crumpled paper or forgotten paperclip.

Napoleon was beginning to wonder whether they were in the right place at all, when they found a room that had clearly been fitted up as an experimental laboratory. Now, however, the workbenches were bare, only a few nuts and bolts scattered across the wooden surfaces.

After they'd been through the entire building, the most useful things they'd found were a forgotten lunchbox, the contents not yet moldy, and a few pages of a recent newspaper.

"Looks like they moved out less than a week ago," Kuryakin said, smoothing out the newspaper.

"And like they didn't leave in a hurry," Napoleon added. "It was planned. But why, and to where?"

Kuryakin hummed in agreement.

They were in a small office area built into the corner of a large, warehouse-like open space on the building's ground floor. The warehouse still contained a few empty cardboard boxes and stacks of wooden pallets. The office area had probably been used for processing deliveries. Now, it held only a broken chair and an empty wastebasket.

Napoleon was about to leave the office and head across the open space when a noise caught his attention. It sounded almost like... approaching footsteps.

"Illya," he hissed, just before the door to the warehouse opened.

They both dived for cover, but not before a bullet whistled past Napoleon's ear. They ended up on the ground behind one of the partition walls that separated the office from the warehouse. The top half of the wall was glass, now shattered by a bullet, but the bottom half, thankfully, was steel.

Napoleon had gotten a glimpse of the new arrivals. There were three of them, all the sort of mindless thug THRUSH seemed to favour. All of them had been armed.

"What's the betting that window we came in through was alarmed?" he whispered.

Illya frowned.

"Whoever installed it did a good job. I didn't see anything at all."

Another round of bullets peppered the wall beyond their hiding place. A voice shouted something in Hungarian. Napoleon was pretty sure it meant, "Come out with your hands up."

He strained his ears, trying to understand where the three men were, and whether they had spread out. If all three of them had stayed near the door, there was a slim chance Napoleon could take them all down at the same time. But the trajectory of the most recent bullets suggested at least one of them had moved. If Napoleon didn't make his own move soon too, they'd be trapped. He took a deep breath, and leaned closer to Illya to whisper in his ear.

"I don't think I can get a clean shot at all of them from here. Listen, you stay here, and I'll -- "

Illya caught his arm.

"Let me."

He had drawn his UNCLE special from inside his jacket. Before Napoleon could object, he stood up, let off three evenly spaced shots through the broken window, and sank back down beside Napoleon again.

This was followed by a long, deafening silence.

"Did you -- "

"I never miss," Illya said flatly.

Napoleon cautiously poked his head out around the side of the partition wall. The three guards were slumped on the floor, two by the door and one several yards away, behind the stack of pallets. He must have been mostly hidden, but Illya had gotten him with a sleep dart in the shoulder.

Napoleon whistled.

"Show off."

Illya just gave him a pointed look. Napoleon got the message. He'd been thinking of Illya as someone to be protected, a backroom agent. He flashed Illya a rueful smile.

"Let's get out of here, shall we?" he suggested.

So they did.

.. .. ..

They sat in the car, waiting for sunset. The amusement park, fortunately, closed early in winter. In the meantime, Napoleon watched the streams of people leaving the woods gradually die away to a trickle.

"Illya?" he said after a while.

Illya had been reading a book he'd produced from the glove compartment, a slim volume called _Discours sur le colonialisme._ Now he raised his head and glanced sideways at Napoleon, eyebrows raised.

"'Illya'?" he echoed.

"You did say I could call you that," Napoleon said, thinking back to that first night they'd spent together.

"I don't believe I ever did," Illya pointed out, but his tone seemed to suggest he wasn't opposed to the idea.

In fact now that Napoleon thought about it, he'd been calling Illya that all day. He smiled to himself.

"Well?" Illya said.

Napoleon found he had almost forgotten what he had originally intended to say. He racked his brains, and it came back to him.

"I was thinking about Lakatos. If the window truly wasn't alarmed, then the only way THRUSH could have know we were in that building was through him."

"Much as my ego would like that explanation, I think it's also possible the alarm was simply so well concealed that I missed it."

"I hope so. If he let those three thugs go, instead of locking them up like he promised, then THRUSH will know exactly how many of us there are, and that we're still on the loose."

Illya grunted in agreement. 

Napoleon glanced at his watch.

"Time to go, I think." 

They entered the woods via the main entrance, across a vast plaza surrounded by imposing monuments and buildings, all in darkness now. They made their way quickly down a long, shadowy, tree-lined avenue, and met Lakatos again at the entrance to the amusement park, as they'd arranged.

The park was completely deserted now, a maze of shuttered kiosks and silent rides, with here and there the huge, hulking shape of a roller-coaster or a helter-skelter. The lights were few and far between, and the shadows were deep.

"There have been reports of minor fires, and rides being vandalized or completely destroyed," Lakatos told them. "The park operators filed a formal complaint last week."

"The THRUSH engineers must have set up practice targets around the Ferris wheel," Napoleon said. "After suborning a few of the park employees, no doubt."

Lakatos led them to the wheel first. The night sky was faintly colored by the lights of the city, and the stark lines of the wheel stood out darkly on that background, a monstrous skeleton towering above them.

"I'm going up," Illya announced. 

He shrugged off his overcoat and handed it to Napoleon. And then he was off, clambering rapidly up the metal structure until he reached the hub. His claim of adolescent fame in gymnastics suddenly seemed a lot more convincing.

Napoleon saw the beam of a flashlight, playing across the center of the structure, and then Illya came sliding back down.

"There's nothing there now, but there was. It's been dismantled, but I could still see the marks where it was mounted." He turned to Lakatos. "Let's have a look at the damage."

It was Napoleon who found the first set of charred remains, about a hundred and fifty yards away from the wheel. It looked like it had once been a gigantic cloth sheet, stretched out across a wooden frame, very much in the style of an over-sized practice target.

"That's quite an impressive range," he said thoughtfully, looking back at the Ferris wheel in the distance.

"Over here too," Illya called.

The three of them spread out, looking for more signs of damage.

Napoleon was examining the charred remains of a hupla stall when he heard a distant shot, and then a thud. It came from the direction in which he'd last seen Illya.

He went running, but Illya seemed to have vanished into thin air, along with whomever he'd shot at -- or whoever had shot him.

He turned in circles for a while, but between the darkness and the densely packed rides and kiosks, he could hardly see more than twenty feet in any direction.

He stopped to think. If Illya had been captured, where would he be taken? Back to the abandoned satrapy? Or did THRUSH have some other base in Budapest?

Lakatos should know whether there had been any rumors to that effect, but the Hungarian agent seemed to have vanished into thin air too. 

Napoleon decided to head back to the Ferris wheel, the last place he'd seen Lakatos. He had almost made it there when a shadow detached itself from the darkness in the entrance to the ghost train, and stepped out in front of him. Napoleon reached for his gun, but someone else had already come up behind him, and he felt the all too familiar sensation of a blunt instrument hitting him over the head.

.. .. ..

When Napoleon woke, he was bound hand and foot, and slung over the shoulder of a huge, muscular guard. From what little he could see of his surroundings, they looked an awful lot like the building he'd explored with Illya earlier that day.

The guard carrying him came to a halt, and Napoleon heard the sound of a key turning in a lock. Then he was tossed into a room, and the door slammed shut behind him.

He hit the ground hard, and all the air was knocked out of him. He groaned, and opened his eyes. The room seemed to be small, windowless, and completely empty, aside from a few shelves nailed to the wall. It had probably been some sort of janitor's closet.

"So glad you could join me, Napoleon," a familiar voice said.

He rolled over onto his other side, and saw Illya lying on the ground beside him, trussed up in an identical manner.

"Ah. Hallo."

"So much for my hopes you'd come to my rescue," Illya said sourly.

"Oh ye of little faith. Luckily for you, I may be sans gun and sans communicator, but I still have something up my sleeve. Or trouser leg, rather."

"What?"

"A small Stanley knife."

Illya raised an eyebrow.

"And what would you have done if we'd been handcuffed instead of tied up?"

"Now that you'll never know, will you?"

He began to wriggle around on the cold tiled floor so that he was pointing the other way, his feet next to Illya's hands.

Napoleon's knees and elbows were stinging from their brush with the hard floor. He tried to concentrate on that, and not on Illya's hands sliding up his leg. But it was hard not to think of the last time Illya's fingers had brushed over his skin. The sharp pain when Illya ripped off the tape holding the knife in place, however, was enough to remind him that now certainly wasn't the place for such thoughts.

"Hands first," Illya said, and they maneuvered again so that their hands were together, and Illya could cut Napoleon's bonds -- carefully, since the knife was sharp and he couldn't see what he was doing.

"Where's Lakatos?" Illya asked as he worked.

"Got away, I hope."

"Hmm."

"Well, at least now we can be a hundred percent sure there's a connection between THRUSH, and whatever was happening in the amusement park."

"But now they've left, and cleared this place out," Illya said thoughtfully. "Without actually using the weapon on anything of significance."

"Maybe it was just a test run," Napoleon suggested.

"Maybe." Illya's voice sounded like he thought he was on to something. "Napoleon, you know where else there's a Ferris wheel in this part of the world?"

"The Prater in Vienna," Napoleon said instantly.

His brain picked up a notch of speed. Behind him, Illya had fallen silent, deep in thought as well.

"The UN Congress on Diplomatic Relations," he said suddenly.

"What?"

"If I remember correctly, it's meeting in a palace in that part of town. I'm not sure exactly where it is relative to the Prater."

Napoleon grimaced.

"What are the odds it's directly opposite the Big Wheel?"

"And there's nothing THRUSH hates more than nations cooperating and fostering world peace, is there?"

With that, Illya cut through the final knot. Napoleon could take the blade in his hands now, and everything became much easier. Within a minute they were both free and on their feet.

The door was locked, of course.

"I don't suppose you still have your little pouch of tools?" Napoleon asked.

Illya shook his head.

Napoleon went through his own pockets, and confirmed what he'd already known: no communicator, no gun, not even the handful of forint coins he'd picked up from the UNCLE treasury before leaving. 

They were looking round the empty room for something they could potentially use as a lock pick when the door opened.

They both spun round, reaching for guns that weren't there.

Lakatos stood in the doorway. In one hand he held a bunch of keys, and in the other a gun, but he relaxed and lowered it when he saw them.

"There you are!" he exclaimed. "I thought this must be where you'd vanished to."

"THRUSH agents in Vidampark," Napoleon explained. "They didn't manage to get you too?"

"They did, actually. But several of my men were following me, and they intervened."

Napoleon felt his eyes widen. He'd had no idea there were other Hungarian agents in the park.

Lakatos looked slightly embarrassed.

"Well, I didn't like to wander around in the dark with two foreign agents I don't know, and no backup."

Napoleon nodded. That was fair enough.

Lakatos holstered his gun again.

"My men are searching and securing this building. When you both vanished I thought that was probably the best thing to do."

"I don't suppose you got anything useful from those three guards you arrested?"

"Only the keys to this place. They're just hired muscle, well known to the police here in Budapest. But we did arrest several more of them in Vidampark and here in this building. And one of them had this in his pocket."

It was a scrap of paper with a telephone number scrawled on it. The international dialing code was for Austria. The city code was for Vienna.

Napoleon and Illya exchanged glances. If that was where the guards had been taking orders from, then their theory about the Big Wheel in Vienna had suddenly gone from speculation to likelihood.

"We need a telephone," Napoleon said.

Lakatos took them back to his office to call UNCLE HQ in Vienna. Napoleon kept the conversation brief, aware that any phone call from Hungary to Austria would certainly be monitored.

"Think we can make it back to Vienna in three hours?" he said as soon as they were back outside in the car.

They didn't talk at all on the way back, but rather took turns at catching a very short nap while the other drove. When they stopped to switch places, just after the border, they also found a public telephone box to call Vienna HQ again.

"They've sent someone to check out the Big Wheel," Napoleon reported back to Illya. "But there was nothing peculiar about it, it seems."

Illya nodded.

"I'd be quite happy to be wrong about this."

"I also got the exact address of the building where the UN congress is being held."

"And?"

"It's just off the Praterstern. About two hundred meters from the Big Wheel."

It was the early hours of the morning by the time they reached Vienna. They headed straight for the Prater, the vast wooded area within the city.

The woods were accessible twenty-four hours, but of course the fairground rides didn't run during the night, and that corner of the park was almost deserted.

The Big Wheel was right next to the entrance, and they found Moncel there, along with a pair of agents from Section Three. Someone had gotten the wheel's chief operator out of bed, and he was standing in front of the ticket office with the agents, looking grumpy.

"I've been up all over the wheel," Moncel said as soon as Illya and Napoleon reached him. "There's nothing there. Nice idea, fellows, but it seems like there's nothing to it."

They both craned their necks to look up at the giant metal structure. From here, in among the rides and just next to the woods, it was impossible to get a feeling for the lie of the land around the wheel. But from up there -- 

"Think you can see the palace from up on the wheel?" Illya said.

They exchanged glances. Napoleon turned to the operator.

"Mind giving us a spin?" 

From the top they could see half Vienna spread out, tinged by the soft light of dawn. Close by was the Praterstern, a large plaza at the intersection of many streets. It was dominated by a train station, and already a steady trickle of tiny stick figures, early morning workers, flowed in and out. Directly below them was the start of the green and wooded area that started at the fairground, and ran far along the banks of the Danube. And on the opposite side of the road, a big imposing building on a street corner, directly in their line of sight --

"I suppose that's the congress venue?"

Illya nodded.

"What do you think? A hundred and fifty yards at most?"

"Well within range," Napoleon said grimly.

They signaled down to the operator, and he set the wheel in motion again. Back on the ground, they found Moncel still standing with him.

"I'm heading back to HQ," Moncel said. "The wheel will operate today. Herr Haidacher here has been quite insistent, and Lehmann has cleared it."

"But surely -- "

"We can't stop the ride for the duration of the congress, just on a hunch. It's due to go on for more than a month yet. Rabenkopf and Rossi here will stay as guards, to make sure THRUSH don't try to install anything on the wheel now that we've checked it. Security at the Congress has been reinforced too."

Before Moncel left, he unlocked a steel case in the trunk of his car, and supplied them with new guns and communicators. 

"See you later," he said. "I suggest you go home and sleep. Lehmann says he doesn't expect you until this afternoon."

With that, he drove off.

Napoleon turned to Illya.

"What do you think?"

Illya was frowning.

"When they cleared out of that lab in Budapest they went _somewhere_. If not here, then where? And if they didn't come here then why did that guard have a Viennese telephone number in his pocket?"

"Why indeed. Let's call HQ and see if they've traced that telephone number, or heard from Lakatos. But first let's find somewhere to freshen up."

"And get something to eat," Illya added, stifling a yawn.

They went to the train station, where they freshened up as well as they could in the men's restroom, and then bought hot dogs at an Imbiss which seemed to be open all night. It wasn't something Napoleon would usually have eaten first thing in the morning, but his stomach seemed to feel like this was still an extension of the previous day.

They sat down on a bench in the station to eat. There'd been no news at HQ, except a confirmation of what Moncel had already told them.

Napoleon closed his eyes and let the sound of train announcements wash over him. Closer by, he heard the rustle of paper as Illya started on his second hotdog.

He smiled to himself. 

"We work rather well together, don't you think?" he said, apropos of nothing.

He opened his eyes in time to see Illya flash him a mustard-smeared smile. He plucked Napoleon's paper wrapper out of his hand, and crumpled it up with his own.

"Come on, we'd better get back."

The fairground was starting to come alive now. The wheel was not yet turning when they got there, but a line had begun to form in front of it, mostly tourists braving the crisp winter weather. Napoleon and Illya headed over to the two UNCLE guards.

"Enjoy your ride this morning, did you?" one of them asked cheerfully. It was Rabenkopf, as far as Napoleon remembered. "I haven't been up there in years myself."

"Me, I come here all the time," the other guard said. "It's a nice place to take a girl -- so long as she has a head for heights."

"Well, my wife absolutely refuses to go up. But it's perfectly safe. There's a maintenance crew who check it early every morning."

Napoleon felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, they came by just half an hour or so ago."

Napoleon stared at him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the wheel begin to move.

"You let them up on the wheel?"

"Well, we could hardly let the ride start up without it having been checked, could we?" He waved a reassuring hand at Napoleon's expression. "It's all right, they weren't anyone suspicious. Just the same maintenance crew that's been working here for years. Haidacher, the operator, confirmed it."

Napoleon didn't stop to wonder whether it was Haidacher himself who'd been suborned, or one of the maintenance crew.

He raced after Illya, who was already shouting at the operator to stop the wheel. Then Illya came to a dead halt, and Napoleon almost ran into him.

There was a second man in the operator's cabin. Napoleon recognized him: he'd been standing in line a minute ago, looking perfectly innocent. But now he had a gun drawn on Haidacher.

Above them, the wheel was gathering speed.

Napoleon shot a swift glance up at it, but its hub was more than a hundred feet above, and he couldn't make anything out. At least there were no passengers in the cabins yet. That was one small mercy.

"Cover me," Illya said, wriggling out of his coat again.

Napoleon already had his gun in his hand. He scanned the crowd for more THRUSH agents, shouting at Rossi to get the civilians out of the way and call HQ, and Rabenkopf to come give him backup. Illya ran towards the foot of the huge tower on which the wheel's axis was mounted.

Rabenkopf, Napoleon, and the THRUSH man in the cabin were at a standoff. The man gave the UNCLE agents a tiny, satisfied smile. They might have their guns trained on him, but as long as he held the operator hostage, they couldn't stop the wheel.

Napoleon left Rabenkopf to the standoff, and spun around, just in time to see a man in the crowd pull a sniper rifle from under his overcoat and drop to one knee, steading its barrel so he could track Illya in his climb. Napoleon took aim, and the man dropped, his rifle clattering to the ground.

Illya was halfway up the central stand now, looking terribly exposed. Another THRUSH agent had materialized from nowhere and was hot on Illya's heels, shooting wildly up at Illya as he scrambled up the metal structure after him.

The wheel was spinning even faster now.

Napoleon dropped into a defensive position behind a low wall, and took a few potshots at the THRUSH man on the wheel. He missed, mostly because he was spending most of his time scanning the crowd for other snipers that would pose Illya a greater threat.

Napoleon cursed, desperately wishing he had more backup. He needed to cover Illya and somehow circle round and take out the man in the operator's cabin, all at the same time. And preferably before the laser weapon was triggered -- that was surely only a matter of time now, and he had no idea how much time. Minutes? Seconds?

He looked around for Rossi, but the man was crouched behind a bratwurst stand, in a firefight with two more THRUSH men who had appeared out of nowhere.

Illya had reached the center of the wheel now. He was perched on the axis, returning fire at the man who was following. They were both a good hundred feet above the ground now. Napoleon made a dash for the rifle the THRUSH sniper had let fall. He knelt, got the man on the wheel in his sight, and pulled the trigger.

He didn't watch the man fall: his gaze was on Illya, who'd already turned to examine the wheel's hub. Within seconds, however, he was signaling down at Napoleon. Napoleon got the message: Illya couldn't do anything while the wheel was turning.

Napoleon turned back to the operator's cabin. He could only see the back of it, but from memory he knew the cabin was enclosed by metal walls on three sides. The only unprotected part was the front, in the field of vision of the THRUSH man inside the cabin.

With a flick of his thumb he switched from bullets to tranquilizer darts. He began to inch forward, slowly and cautiously, until he reached a point where he could just see the hostage, and couldn't see the THRUSH man at all. It was a tricky angle, and he'd have to do this in just one shot if it was going to work. He raised his gun, took aim, and shot the hostage.

The THRUSH man was taken by surprise for just a second when the operator slipped suddenly from his grasp, and Napoleon jumped forward, taking advantage of that to shoot him too.

Then he raced to the cabin, leaned in, and hit the big red button marked NOTHALT, emergency stop.

The wheel began to slow down, and Napoleon could finally breathe again.

He looked around, and saw Rossi and Rabenkopf had dealt with the last two THRUSH agents, making up for their earlier stupidity. Up on the wheel, Illya could finally go to work without disturbance. After a few minutes, Napoleon saw him toss something down into the woods beyond the wheel.

Soon, Illya was on his way back to the ground. He jumped down the last yard, landing on his feet where Napoleon stood waiting.

Napoleon grinned at him, adrenaline still coursing through his veins. Illya's eyes were bright and his face was flushed. Napoleon rather wanted to kiss him.

What's more, he was pretty sure Illya was thinking the same thing.

Rabenkopf popped up beside them at just that moment.

"Would you mind coming to explain the situation to these policemen, Mr Solo?"

.. .. ..

They drove home in Illya's car, after a day of post-mission paperwork, medical visits and debriefings. Neither of them had slept in over thirty-six hours. Napoleon was bone-tired, but he also didn't want to let Illya out of his sight.

"Want a drink?" he offered, as the elevator took them upwards.

Illya gave him an amused look.

"Do you even have anything to drink in your apartment?"

"Ah -- " said Napoleon, who hadn't managed to get any food or drink in during the three days he'd been living there.

"Come on."

Illya led the way up to his apartment, two floors higher. It turned out to be identical to Napoleon's in size and furnishings. Where Napoleon's apartment was almost empty, however, Illya's looked comfortably lived-in: there was an overflowing set of bookshelves in the corner, a pile of journals on the floor by the sofa, and an unwashed mug on the coffee table.

"I only have vodka or schnapps," Illya said, stripping off coat and holster.

"Schnapps, then." 

It wasn't something he would drink at home, but American schnapps shared only its name with what Illya was offering him.

Napoleon sank down onto the sofa. Illya had lit only a small side lamp, and the room was pleasantly dim and quiet. The sofa was comfortable too, and Napoleon finally let the tension drain from his body after two long, exhausting days.

He couldn't relax completely, however. He was very conscious of the fact that he was leaving Vienna as soon as tomorrow, if Waverly had anything to say about it.

He was hit by a sudden blast of freezing cold air, and looked up to see Illya taking a bottle of vodka in from the windowsill. Napoleon watched him pour the drinks, studying his face in profile. He realized with a shock that he was memorizing the contours of Illya's face -- the sharp nose, the incongruous softness at the chin, the small frown between his brows as he concentrated on making sure the bottle lids were well screwed on.

Illya came over carrying the two glasses. He looked from the empty chair to the half-empty sofa, and chose the sofa, handing Napoleon his drink before he sat.

Napoleon gave him a small smile, and raised his glass.

"To many more successful missions for both of us."

He held Illya's gaze as they clinked glasses. Illya's eyes were tired, shadowed and slightly bloodshot. But what else was there in his gaze?

Napoleon put his glass down on the coffee table. He stared into it, the evening to come unfolding in his mind. They would finish their drinks, talk a little longer, and then say good-bye. He'd go back to his room, and pack his bag. Maybe he'd sit down with a newspaper for a while before going to bed. Tomorrow he'd be on the plane back to New York.

There was a good chance he'd meet Illya again, of course. UNCLE was not that big an organization, and it was likely their paths would cross at some point over the next few years. Maybe briefly, at some crucial point in a mission, or maybe they'd even have time for conversation and drinks, to talk and think about what might have been.

He looked up, and found Illya's gaze fixed on him. Illya swallowed, almost a nervous gesture, but his gaze didn't waver.

"Napoleon," he began, and his voice was so low it sent shivers down Napoleon's spine.

Napoleon swallowed too, his mouth unexpectedly dry. Illya was so close, close enough to touch. His expression was deadly serious, with a hint of uncertainty in the eyes.

Last time, in the hotel room, they'd flirted with each other, joked and teased each other. But this time Napoleon found he couldn't. 

This was too important.

"Do you want -- ?" His voice sounded hoarse to his ears.

Illya nodded, a quick but decided motion.

Napoleon raised his hand to brush along the curve of Illya's face, his cheek, his jaw. Then he slid his hand behind the nape of Illya's neck, and Illya came forward in a rush. 

They stayed like that for a long time, kissing softly, drawing out the moment. Napoleon could feel a sweet, sharp urge slowly building inside him. 

Illya's hands began to move, stroking down Napoleon's back before moving to undo his tie. His collar. His front buttons.

"I've been thinking about this for days now," he confessed, running his hand down Napoleon's chest. He stopped, teasingly, one finger tracing the waistband. Napoleon's hips jerked involuntarily. Illya grinned, and twisted his wrist so the heel of his hand pressed Napoleon's erection.

Napoleon groaned. He hooked his hand into Illya's shirt and gave a sharp tug, wanting Illya on top of him, straddling him. Illya's foot hit the coffee table, and a glass slid off and fell onto the rug with a thud. They both froze.

Napoleon let his head fall back onto the sofa, laughing.

"I hope that was the vodka and not the schnapps."

Illya didn't seem to care particularly about the state of his carpet.

"Bedroom," he said firmly.

He planted a kiss on Napoleon's mouth, and then scrambled to his feet, pulling Napoleon with him.

" _S udovol'stviem,_ " Napoleon said fervently, and followed him into the bedroom.

.. .. ..

Napoleon woke on his side, his leg flung over Illya's, his face buried in the crook of Illya's neck. The bedroom was still lit by the small lamp they'd left on. He lifted his head cautiously, wondering whether Illya kept a clock somewhere near his bed. He should already know that, really, but last night he'd had a good excuse for not performing the quick security scan he usually did the first time he entered a room.

Illya stirred.

"Napoleon?"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."

Illya turned to face him, reaching out for him.

"I'd rather be awake."

"Yeah, me too."

Napoleon wished heartily they hadn't dropped off so quickly the night before, but they'd both been exhausted. He felt like a clock was ticking, counting down his final hours in Vienna. Illya seemed to be thinking the same thing, because he asked, "What time is it?"

Napoleon sat up properly, and saw an alarm clock on the bedside table. His heart sank.

"Already six in the morning."

"Oh."

Illya sounded just as unhappy about that as Napoleon felt.

"Illya?" 

Illya's hand snaked out to find Napoleon's, and his thumb began to move across Napoleon's palm in a gentle caress.

"Yes?"

Napoleon had been turning an idea over in his mind. 

"You know, Waverley has a scheme where he sends his agents out on loan for a few months, to give them more experience. I was going to request London, but..." He paused. "Well, I could also request Vienna."

Illya's hand stilled. For a long moment, he said nothing.

Too soon, Napoleon thought. They barely knew each other, after all. Illya was probably thinking he was crazy.

A few seconds later, however, Illya said thoughtfully, "We have a similar scheme, in fact. And I have always wanted to visit Greenwich Village."

Napoleon turned so that he could see Illya's expression.

"You would come -- ?"

Illya hesitated, biting his lip. Finally he grimaced and shook his head.

"On second thought, it's impossible."

"Why? I'm sure Waverley will go for the idea, and if Lehmann objects -- "

"It's not UNCLE's agreement I'm worried about. It's the US government and my own ex-superiors. Not counting diplomats, the only way for a Soviet citizen to get into the US at the moment is illegally, or as a defector."

"UNCLE could wrangle it."

Illya's lip curled in resignation.

"Maybe, but I'm not sure I want to be in such a delicate position. Maybe in a few years the situation will have changed." After a moment's reflective silence, he turned over in one quick movement so that he was looking directly up at Napoleon. "Would you really come back to Vienna?"

They stared at each other for a long moment. Napoleon's heart had picked up speed. So they were taking this seriously -- maybe they were both crazy.

He nodded.

Illya's frown softened into a smile. He pulled Napoleon down for a kiss, one that left Napoleon in no doubt about his enthusiasm for the idea.

"Actually there's another possibility, Napoleon," he added between kisses. "We could both try to be sent somewhere else on loan together. Have you ever lived in Paris?"

.. .. ..  
End  
.. .. ..

**Author's Note:**

> Some historical notes for those who like that sort of thing (I know I do!):
> 
> For a fic about a plot to blow stuff up with giant lasers, this one is surprisingly historically accurate. All the dates, places and events seemed to line up just as I needed them. The Ferris wheels are both real, and the UN Congress really took place in Vienna at that time, though not right next to the Prater. The stuff about lasers, including dates, technical info etc. is also all true -- except for the nonsense about rotating a laser turning it into a weapon, of course.
> 
> The US made significant changes to visa regulations for Soviet citizens in 1962, a year after this fic is set.
> 
> One of the interesting things I've learnt from fanfic is how very much more quickly household appliances became widespread in the US than in Europe. Illya certainly wouldn't have had a freezer in Vienna in 1961 -- in fact, he might not even have had a fridge...


End file.
